24/6/2023
It’s 2023 and we continue to close in on our dream of financial independence (FI). However, something is off…
…over the past 18 months, I’ve been working more hours than ever. Quite contrary to how I thought things would go when I first started on this journey. When started out, I thought that once I reach financial independence, I’d stick the middle finger to the company and live life on easy street. I also believed that I would reduce my hours significantly, or even do some quiet quitting, as a got closer to my goal. Quite the contrast from what is happening now.
Reflecting back on the past 18 months, this increase in effort expenditure has been the result of me enjoying the work that I’m doing. I’m getting a sense of accomplishment from learning and experiencing new things as well as using the skills I’ve accrued over the years. While this sounds like a lame job ad written by the company’s recruitment team; this is actually something that getting close to financial independence has, unexpectedly, helped me to discover.
Financial independence grants choice
I’ve always enjoyed the sense of accomplishment that working hard; and doing things to the best of my ability brings. So currently, I’m finding that having a large portion of our living costs covered by passive income affords me the opportunity to work the way I want to. Even at this partial level of financial independence I have the confidence to essentially say to the company ‘if you don’t like the way I do things, tough’. This is because it affords both of us the luxury of having years to find another job if we aren’t enjoying the conditions with our current employers. In essence, I’m choosing to work hard, because I enjoy working this way, and the choice that partial financial independence has given feels incredibly empowering and liberating.
On satisfying an engineer’s mindset towards failure
As an engineer, designing and planning for failure scenarios is always on my mind. What I’ve realized, is that even when our portfolio reaches 25 or even 30 times annual expenses, I’ll still feel the need to bring in some level of income to prevent for the 1 in 100 or even 1 in 1000 black swan event. But I what I’ve realized now is that FIRE, for me, is much more about the FI (financial independence) part than the RE (retire early) part. It’s all about the choice to do what brings me joy, and regardless of whether these activities are called ‘work’, they will likely bring in some level of active income.
Financial Independence in not binary
I used to think that the feeling of freedom that financial independence could provide was binary. If annual passive income was less than annual expenses you had no choice but to slog it out in the new aged prison called work. However, getting to where we are now has allowed me to understand that the feeling of freedom grows as your level of independence grows. I’d probably go on to say that this feeling of freedom would be different for everyone. Some would need to have 25x annual income covered whereas others would only need to have their mortgage paid off. Whatever this level may be I hope that this share motivates you to work towards your own financial goals
Engineer your freedom